do you believe in monsters?
by ryoutakise
Summary: implied bert/reiner, short drabble;; you can outrun the past but you can't escape the memories.


The first time he sees the blood on his hands, he cuts himself in the shower. Bertholdt didn't shave often, but when he decided to he sliced his leg right open, which really was just his luck. "Fuck." He mumbled, dropping the razor and toeing it away, twisting his leg and concernedly examining the cut. For one second, the blood is shallow and discolored by the shower water, more pink than red— then the blood thickens, and then there are streets of blood, rivers of blood, an ocean of blood stretching over enchanting rooftops and rushing down his throat with the crack of brittle bones. He stumbles backwards unconsciously, his back hitting the shower wall and his elbow hitting the row of shampoo bottles and knocking them over with a crash and a bang that draws him back into reality. His chest constricts for what feels like hours but only happens in the span of seconds and he can still almost see the blood staining his hands, but the sick feeling passes and a bandaid makes it feel like it never happened.

It comes in dreams after that. Snapshots of another time, another planet even, where there are monsters wearing his friends' faces and monsters _eating_ his friends' faces. Dreams where he's a million feet tall, dreams where he crumbles stone under his hands and feet like dirt. Sometimes he's human, but he's still a monster, and he _knows_ it but he calls himself a warrior to make himself feel better and wipes the blood off his hands. He feels like Dorothy when he wakes up and Reiner is in the bed across from his— oh, I had the strangest dream, and _you _were there, and _you _were there…

The blood and the dreams open a floodgate. He sees it everywhere. It starts getting clearer to him. The screams. The blood under his feet. He's a monster, and a murderer. Not just a murderer, but a genocider, because he was a monster. Bertholdt looks in the mirror and tired blue eyes stare back, and he thinks 'once a monster, always a monster' because nothing ever changed.

Reiner's not at the dorm when it happens. The realization strikes him, the final grasp of what he's done, what he did. Marco's smile. Eren's mom. Mikasa's face when the only thing set on her mind was his destruction; Annie, '_remember the mission'_, and Reiner's hands and Reiner's laugh. The tiny houses and tiny people and tiny screams under his feet, and he is a god for one moment but a monster for all the others.

"I'm back!" The door slams. Reiner is loud and his presence commands attention, but Bert isn't there to greet him. His body is, but he's miles away, worlds away, centuries away in another place and another time. That's how Reiner notices something's wrong right away, in the hunch of his shoulders, the harshness of his breath and the fact that he's just— just sitting there on the floor, too tall but trying to curl up into nothing, compacting himself. "Bert, is…everything alright?" He asks hesitantly, dropping his bag on his bed and edging closer to his roommate.

Bertholdt starts to make an alarming noise, and Reiner worries he can't breath for a second until he realizes that he's laughing. The laughter escalates until Reiner is scared at the volume and raggedness of his voice, so he steps forward without thinking and bends to put a hand on Bert's shoulder. The laughter stops, then, but the shaking doesn't. "What's wrong?" Reiner muttered, a note of urgency overtaking his voice.

He doesn't reply for a minute, and Reiner is worried he didn't hear him, but the shaking subsides bit by bit. "Hey, Reiner…" Bertholdt croaked, lifting his tear-streaked face and smiling at Reiner. "We're…eheh…we're murderers, Reiner…didja know?" He laughed again, a short bark of laughter that sounds like a scream, and that sets him off. In a second, he's pushing at Reiner's chest and shoulders and he _is_ screaming, "G-GET OFF ME I'M A DISGUSTING MURDERER DON'T TOUCH ME DON'T FUCKING TOUCH ME—" but Reiner catches his hands and sinks to the floor with him, and Bertholdt deflates and wilts into Reiner's chest.

Questions unasked and unanswered bubble at Bertholdt's lips when he tries to cry, but the words don't come out and he surrenders himself to the other boy. Reiner is steady and solid and warm and Bertholdt can almost pretend he's okay, but nothing it's not even close to okay because Reiner's a monster too and it's fitting that they've found each others company. It takes almost an hour on the floor for Bertholdt to get it together, a cramped, uncomfortable, and hot hour before the questions rise to the surface and Bertholdt finds his tongue.

"Do you believe in reincarnation?"

_end;;_


End file.
